The Fremont City Council recently appointed Gus Morrison as interim Mayor, filling the office until the next Mayor is elected later this year. I feel Gus is qualified in this role and wish him the best.

As a point of reference for this letter that I am writing, I point out that I received my college degree in Mathematics. As much as anything else, a Mathematics degree teaches the discipline of collecting data, studying the data, and forming a conclusion. I have been practicing this discipline in my 34-year professional career since graduating from college. This being said...

I researched the vote taken on the evening of January 30, 2012 as to how the Council member ranked the candidates. I admit I had a prejudice going into the vote as I was hoping the Council would determine that my brother Dirk was best qualified to fill the seat. Of the four Council members, two voted Dirk as their top choice and two voted Dirk as fourth choice. Now this is where I did a bit more research.

I thought it odd that there was such a gap between first and fourth. I don't believe the Council members are generally so divided to justify the 3-point gap. I then noticed that the two fourth place votes came from Council members that have stated privately (even perhaps publicly) their intention to run for Mayor later this year. This coincidence was too inviting to ignore.

After more thought, here's where I ended up: For the two Council members planning to run for Mayor, it would be self-serving for them to appoint an interim mayor who does not have any intention of having his or her name on the ballot later this year. For the record, Dirk publicly stated he has no intention entering the race. And those who know Dirk know that his word is his commitment.

The two Council members who ranked Dirk fourth know him very well and should know that he is good to his word. Despite this, for their selfish and self-serving reasons, these two Council members appear to believe that Dirk was more of a threat to throw his hat in the Mayoral race than was Gus Morrison.

So I put the readers to task. Take note later in the year to learn which Council members declare their candidacy for Mayor. Then do your own research to see how these candidates cast their vote this past Tuesday. And dollars to doughnuts, I'll bet you too will see the correlation.